


the fire of our eyes, the flash of our teeth

by pawn_vs_player



Series: it takes and it takes and it takes (aka: Adrian writes fic to cope with Infinity War) [6]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 'major character death' tagged because the story starts with, Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Animate Object, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, BAMF Women, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, DESPITE ALL OF THEM BEING FUCKING D E A D, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Non-canon Character Death, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Not Natasha Friendly, POV Alternating, Robots, Sentient Objects, Snapshots, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Stream of Consciousness, Survivor Guilt, i blame marvel's inability to write female characters unless they're connected to male characters, of sorts, semi-spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War, sorry fam, the death of the male half of the MCU, they're not giving me much to work with here, this managed to still be kinda focused on the men, yknow
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-18 04:33:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14845778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pawn_vs_player/pseuds/pawn_vs_player
Summary: INFINITY WAR SPOILERS (minor, but still)Thanos snaps his fingers, and half the universe dies.Unfortunately for Thanos, he didn't put much thought into how the Stones would decide to eliminate that half.(Or: the male half of the universe disappears. The ones left behind try to adjust.)((Title paraphrased from a fantastic Maya Angelou poem.))





	1. i. the general

**Author's Note:**

> so,,,, yeah,,, i took everyone in the MCU and murdered all the men. then i left behind the women and those i headcanon as either genderqueer (other than ftm) or,, yknow,,, aliens and/or objects w/o the human concept of gender.  
> (why did i do this to myself)

_This is no place to die,_ he says, and then - 

And then his hand on her arm flakes away, and he does not have the time to vocalize the horror in his face as he crumbles.

(She will tell the story at his funeral. A few will laugh, but she does not begrudge them. It is the laughter of the grieving; the laughter of those clinging to life.)

She stands, alone, with his dust on her hands and on her boots and on the ground. (There is no body to bring back, no spirit to release, no proof that  _he was here._ ) She stands, alone, and feels her world collapsing in on her.

She does not cry. She is too numb for tears. (Those will come later, when the walls between her mind and her heart crumble to dust as he did and she falls to the ground in sobs, alone in her room, her husband gone and her king gone and her entire world rocked to the core.)

She gathers what she can of his dust; clutches it tight in her fingers and wraps it in her sash. The monsters they had fought are gone, crumbled away as well. She drops her spear and leaves it where it lies.

She has no king to defend, only his remains to bring back. (She has no husband, and no one who will gather his dust to bring home to her.)

 


	2. ii. the mother

Has she not lost enough already?

It is impertinent, bordering on disrespectful, but she has not the heart left to care. _Have I not lost enough?!_ she demands of the empty sky, of the gods that prowl in the stars, of their goddess who gave them vibranium and the heart-shaped herb and the pride of their people. She is disrespectful, she is impious, she is courting death like she courted her husband (bright eyes and a sharp tongue and a heart left cracked with loss); she is far too close to alone to care enough for what is left. For this moment, she screams at the sky, at the universe that cares not for her shattered heart or the dust that is all that remains of the life she made.

For this moment, she is not the wife of a king or the mother of a king or the mother of a genius, she is not an obedient worshiper or a deferential servant, she is not a weak human subject of a mighty goddess who could crush her in a blink: she is anger, she is fury burning bright and grief cutting deep and disbelief wailing out.

The moment is over, and she sinks to her knees, her face in her hands. When will it be enough, she whispers dully, eyes dry as the desert.

(The sky says nothing, which is perhaps for the best. When the sky is not silent, after all, it is raining death and destruction down on her lands.)


	3. iii. the genius

She does not know what to do. She can't remember the last time she didn't know what to do - she's a genius, she makes things, she's an inventor, her mind whirs at the speed of sound and she creates and fixes as easily as she breathes (she cannot breathe so easy now), but she doesn't know what to do. 

He's dead.

They're all dead.  _They're all dead._

The soldier she worked so hard to put back together - the android she had tried to save - so many of her people -  _her **brother**  - _

They are all dead.

She can't fix that. 

She  _doesn't know what to do_. 

(She knows what she has to do. Her mother is queen consort and her brother is dead. She is the only one left.)

She remembers the green flash that heralded the end of her world and thinks, for a hot and terrible moment, that she would be happy to die to its power if she could use it to bring everyone back. 


	4. iv. the revolutionary

She has spent her grief on him already.

She loves him (loved - no, her love is still there, hot and angry in her chest, it has not ceased despite his passing), she loves him dearly, but she thought him dead once before, and she spent her grief. She knows, now, what she will do if her king dies, the king she loves, for she has lived it. 

She will do as she has always done. She will go on, and she will serve Wakanda, for when one leader falls another rises, always: her duty is to the throne, not the monarch; her duty is to the country, not its figurehead; her duty is to the people, not the person. 

She did not marry him. She is not his widow. She has no right to him in death other than the feelings she still carries, and the feelings she knows he carried for her.

She has no rights to him. He was her king, beyond all else, and now she will have a queen. 

(His death does not break her. It didn't before and it won't now.)

The loss of all that life is terrible, yes, but she didn't become a spy and a free thinker because her grief for humanity crippled her. She became herself because her grief for humanity made her want to change that which brings grief.

(She is _woman_ , eternally downtrodden and passed over. She knows the shadows like her own heart.)

She remembers the old stories in practically every religion, the flood that came and cleansed the earth, covering everything but the highest mountains, killing all but the best souls (the souls who knew how to listen when a higher power spoke). She remembers the stories and looks at her country, trees torn up and torn to pieces, the throne empty, the castle echoing with weeping.

She remembers the stories and looks at her country, fields covered in dust. She thinks: a new flood for a new age. She thinks: there is never enough water in Africa. She thinks: new replaces the old. She thinks: everything comes at a cost.

She thinks: there may not be a next generation, but change will come for all of us who still live.

(She thinks: goodbye, my love, but you always knew my heart belonged to the earth more than it did to you.)

**Author's Note:**

>  _Women like you drown oceans._ \- Rupi Kaur


End file.
